it is a regret of mine that I missed Tom "Curly" Richardson, one of our greatest fast bowlers, by just 17 years – not really such a long time when we fancifully span cricket's expansive history. In 1912 his body was found – though never quite explained – on a French hillside. By then it was physically unrecognizable from the well‑muscled figure who with Bill Lockwood had regularly cheered and uplifted the Oval crowds.
He was only 41, though the decline had been going on for several years. The cheeks were already puffy and the eyes listless. He carried too much weight at the midriff and moved with the sluggish reluctance of a man who had perhaps lost the will to live. Tom no longer looked, even remotely, like a Test performer, feared for his pace, liked for his good nature.
The mystery of his death led inevitably to rumors of suicide, the drastic course of a few of his mind-weary contemporaries. But the evidence was far too sketchy and should be discounted. Despite the absence of medical records and the findings of any kind of inquest, Richardson did appear to die from natural causes. Ill-health, increasing arthritis and an unhappy domestic life may have combined to make him thoroughly miserable but not to the extent of killing himself.
As someone who lives some miles from Surrey, I find it hard to determine why exactly the swarthy Tom, a well‑built man of kindly thoughts and Gypsy blood, became one of my posthumous heroes. It must be because of the well‑intentioned though ill‑judged decision to make a single guest appearance after he had retired as a Surrey player. He fell for the sentimental brandishments of Somerset's loquacious Aussie exile, Sammy Woods, who set him up in a Bath pub and then persuaded him to play for Somerset against the touring Australians.
Curly's appearance was a disaster, mocking as it did the fast bowler's bountiful career and all those wickets he earned by sweat, natural prowess and instinctive, pacy technique. He was introduced as second change, something of a demotion for a former England opening bowler, and took no wickets in 13 overs of medium-paced dross. He shouldn't have played. Sammy Woods' heart may have been in the right place but the Richardson comeback was seen by many as a misplaced gimmick. Tom himself knew it was a mistake and hurried away at the close to polish the glasses and pour the first pints. His erstwhile Surrey mate, another exile, the leg tweaker and assertive Test bat Len Braund, had told him unwisely that he had nothing to lose by that belated single appearance. It must also have appealed to have one final go, however unrealistically, against the country where he had twice toured. Yet fallibility and bad judgment remain an absorbing feature of the human condition.
Was there ever anything more embarrassing than Wally Hammond's solitary match in 1951, when no longer physically fit, to play against Somerset as part of an ill-advised membership drive for Gloucestershire? He had already retired from the game, with no intention of ever playing for his county again. His stay at the crease, following the warmest of romantic welcomes as he strolled to the wicket, was brief and cruelly misplaced. He kept playing and missing; the coordination had gone. Up in the stands, the members and his once doting fans fidgeted. The Somerset slow bowler Horace Hazell, who had always idolized Hammond, swore that he tried to encourage him with half-volleys. "When Wally could do nothing with them, I shed private tears." England's great batsman and captain had made a serious mistake in agreeing to play. When mercifully he was out, the big crowd, still palpably affectionate, was silent and only wished he had left them with merely his wondrous memories.
Some, with reactionary propensities, continued for years to cite Hammond's one-time colleague Charlie Parker for what they saw as his unforgivable demonstration of public anger. That was for what happened in a hotel lift when incensed by too many slights and snubs, he grabbed Sir Pelham Warner by the neck and had to be subdued from landing a haymaker on English cricket's most revered grandee.
The cricketing regrets, not just Tom Richardson's, multiplied, right up to the time of Mike Atherton's mischievous exploration of the Test ball's seam and Andrew Flintoff's amphibious nocturnal adventures. Perhaps the saddest I experienced was during a Cheltenham festival, where I found myself talking to a blind man for whom a companion was giving a running commentary. "How I love cricket and desperately wish I could see the play." He was George Shearing, the great jazz pianist who liked to be taken to a Gloucestershire match during summer visits to this country.
Its good written.
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